How to Automatically Categorize and Tag Posts in WordPress

Too lazy to choose categories and tags for your WordPress posts? Then, why not automatically categorize and tag posts without your manual input? We’ll show you how to do it with our snippet.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

<?php

add_action( 'wp_insert_post', 'update_post_terms' );

function update_post_terms( $post_id ) {
    if ( $parent = wp_is_post_revision( $post_id ) )
        $post_id = $parent;
    $post = get_post( $post_id );
    if ( $post->post_type != 'post' )
        return;

    // add a tag
    wp_set_post_terms( $post_id, 'new tag', 'post_tag', true );

    // add a category
    $categories = wp_get_post_categories( $post_id );
    $newcat    = get_term_by( 'name', 'Some Category', 'category' );

    array_push( $categories, $newcat->term_id );
    wp_set_post_categories( $post_id, $categories );
}
?>

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly copy / paste code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: Best WordPress Page Builders (Compared).